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FEATURING TAMAR SARAI - On November 4, 2025, the small New England town of Somerville, Massachusetts became the first in the nation to pass a ballot measure instructing local authorities to divest from Israel. The vote, labeled “Question 3” passed with 56% support. Weeks later, the Somerville City Council followed through with the voter demand and passed a resolution to follow through on the process of divestment. 

How did Somerville do it and how can other cities follow suit?

Tamar Sarai is a Philadelphia based journalist. She is currently a contributing writer at Prism as well as a History PhD student at Temple University and wrote about Somerville's Question 3 fight. She spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about the story.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: So let's talk about Somerville's, small little town, but very liberal. And although it sounds like something that might be seen as not terribly surprising, as you point out in your story on Prism, the issue of Question 3 was not without challenges. How did it start? I understand it was just two short years ago that a single individual was able to begin mobilizing and helped form a broad-based coalition to make this question and ballot measure possible?

Tamar Sarai: Yes, yes. So, the organization behind the ballot question is called Somerville for Palestine. And it's a group of local organizers, community members that came together at the end of 2023, and they were really committed to having their city council pass a ceasefire resolution. And so they successfully advocated for that ceasefire resolution, and it passed in January of 2024, making Somerville actually the first city in Massachusetts to put to pass their own ceasefire resolution. 

So, that was a big win for Somerville for Palestine especially given the fact that the coalition was so new. And from there, they really wanted to make sure that Somerville was a part of the BDS movement. So, “boycott, divest, sanction,” and that started with organizers just following the money and doing a lot of in-depth research. 

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FEATURING UNAI MONTES-IRUESTE - Our nation and our world is overrun by billionaires and bigots, but they are few and we are many. On this series, exclusive to subscribers of Rising Up With Sonali and viewers of Free Speech TV, we’ll hear from organizers in the movements for social justice, and dig into the nuts and bolts of values, strategies, tactics, narratives, and building power. 

This week, Unai Montes-Irueste, the Media Strategy Director for People's Action and People's Action Institute joins us. Prior to taking on this role, Unai consulted for /ˈmantrə/, (a.k.a. mantra strategy group) a public affairs firm he co-founded. He also served as Narrative and Strategic Communications Director for Housing California, and many other roles.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: People’s Action is an organization that many might have heard of. I understand it’s a coalition of groups around the country and in many, many different states. It's been around for 50 years. And from what I gather, it is focused on issue-based fights, particularly through the electoral process, but not necessarily exclusively. Is that relatively accurate? How, how do you describe People’s Action? 

Unai Montes-Irueste: Yeah, Of course. Well, thank you again. yeah, People’s Action and our sister organization, our C-4 Sister People’s Action Institute are national networks. And those networks consist of what we like to call power building groups or grassroots affiliates. And so, we're basically starting where folks are in more than 80 organizations all across the country. And in those communities, folks are identifying the issues that matter most to them. And what of course we've seen, as you've indicated in your introduction, is that there are some common threads throughout. 

A lot of challenges with affordability, a lot of challenges with healthcare, a lot of challenges with climate justice and housing. And those things have helped build out robust issue campaigns and those robust issue campaigns live through local organizing and then also national organizing. 

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FEATURING DORTELL WILLIAMS - Crime, we know, is linked to wealth inequality. But it’s also built on social fracturing. Our special correspondent Dortell Williams has thought long and hard about the roots of public safety, how to preserve and strengthen it, and says that mentorship is a powerful, and underrated mode of human connection that can prevent crimes. 

Dortell Williams, incarcerated individual at Mule Creek State Prison, serving a sentence of life without parole, currently seeking his freedom at www.FreeDortellWilliams.com. Dortell is a regular correspondent on Rising Up With Sonali. He spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about mentorship, his experience with it, and why it works.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: One of the things that takes up your attention is how folks who are, whether they're incarcerated or not incarcerated, can benefit from mentorship. It's something that I've thought about over the years as someone who's, you know, had younger people I've mentored, but after having gotten to know you and some of the work that you do, it seems as though mentorship, especially within prison walls, can be life-changing and even life-saving. Would you say that? 

Dortell Williams: Oh, absolutely. And I, think my idea of mentorship is to have mentorship before we end up going to prison. Because so many of us, I mean, when you think about it, most of the kids who go astray are misguided. They've been misguided sometimes by their own parents. I'm one of them. I love my dad. My dad was, you know, as good as he could be at the time, but unfortunately, you know, he had his own traumas, and so he misguided me into criminality and, you know, those types of things. 

And, just like so many of the other youth out there, you know, we needed intervention. A real robust policy of intervention is the best way to tackle crime and to approach public policy, you know, for obvious reasons. 

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FEATURING MARIANNE DHENIN - In October 2025, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 715 into law, a troubling piece of legislation aimed at public education in the state, primarily around criticism of Israel. 

The bill’s opponents say it is vague, rife with potential for abuse, and clearly violates the First Amendment of teachers and students. A growing coalition of educators and activists are hoping to beat it back. 

Marianne Dhenin is an award-winning journalist and historian whose recent story is called A Growing Coalition is Fighting Censorship in California’s Public Schools. Marianne spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about the story recently.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: This story is so interesting because one of the, I think, less-reported aspects of it that you really lift up in your piece is how there's this unholy alliance, or maybe even just such an overlap, between those people who have gone after anti-Israel criticism and those people who have attacked ethnic studies in public schools in California. The pro-Israel crowd meets the MAGA crowd, and of course, many of them are one in the same. So tell me about AB 715 , how it is that this intersection of people who attack ethnic studies and criticism of Israel came together to pass this bill. 

Marianne Dhenin: AB 715 comes after a couple of years of efforts in California's legislature. A series of bills have been introduced over the past couple of years since California enshrined an ethnic studies graduation requirement into law back in 2021 with AB101. AB 715 is the first in a series of bills that have attacked ethnic studies education in California to pass and to be signed into law. 

Several of these have come out of California's legislative Jewish caucus, which is a group of democratic lawmakers, but pro-Israel lawmakers. 

Not everyone in the caucus is Jewish, and the caucus doesn't represent the diversity of California's Jewish communities according to the sources that I spoke with, which include organizers with Jewish voice for peace. So, after a couple of years of efforts, AB 715 has passed. 

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FEATURING ANDY LEE ROTH - As Netflix and Paramount make aggressive bids to buy Warner Bros, our increasingly consolidated media ecosphere, controlled by billionaires and serving their agendas, distorts, under-covers, or even censors major news stories entirely. It’s a long trend that’s getting worse, and is the reason why Project Censored, now in its 50th year, continues to publish the most censored news stories of the year. 

Andy Lee Roth is editor-at-large for Project Censored and its publishing imprint, The Censored Press. He is co-editor of Project’s State of the Free Press 2026 and a coauthor of The Media and Me: A Guide to Critical Media Literacy for Young People. He spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about some of the year's most censored stories.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: So, as I mentioned, we are seeing greater media consolidation. I figure, eventually, maybe in our lifetimes, there'll be one great company controlling it all, and of course that limitation of who's in charge limits the stories as well. Tell me, just for those who aren't familiar with Project Censored, what is this State of the Free Press book that comes out at the end of every year, and why is it put together? 

Andy Lee Roth: Yeah. Well, the project exists to hold the corporate media accountable when they fail to provide us the kind of news and information that we need to be informed and engaged in our communities as citizens, as global citizens. And also, to celebrate the important work of independent journalists who bring us those stories and independent news outlets who have the courage to support research on, and publish those stories. So, a kind of a cornerstone of the yearbook every year is our report on the year's most important, but under reported stories. And that's something the project has been doing for 50 years now. 

This is the 50th cohort of undergraduate students working with Project Censored at colleges and universities across the country, starting at Sonoma State University in California. Students working with their faculty mentors are identifying these important but potentially undercovered stories and then researching them to see, have they indeed been left unaddressed by corporate media, or addressed, but in partial terms in both senses of that word, partial, either incomplete or also biased?

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FEATURING CHRISTINE NEUMANN-ORTIZ - Our nation and our world is overrun by billionaires and bigots, but they are few and we are many. On this series, exclusive to subscribers of Rising Up With Sonali and viewers of Free Speech TV, we’ll hear from organizers in the movements for social justice, and dig into the nuts and bolts of values, strategies, tactics, narratives, and building power. 

This week, Christine Neumann-Ortiz, founding Executive Director of Voces de la Frontera and Voces de la Frontera Action joins us. She serves on the board of a national coalition of the Fair Immigration Reform Movement and is a national leader in the immigrant rights movement.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: I've spoken to you so many times before on my other show, Rising Up With Sonali. This time we're focusing on your organization rather than all of the scary issues that we usually talk about. Let's talk about Voces itself. 

As I mentioned, it's based in Wisconsin, but you have such a national profile now, you've really made the organization one that is a national contender. we think of the big cities like LA and New York and Chicago as being centers of immigrant rights, organizing, but you've really made Wisconsin stand out. How do you summarize the work that Voces de la Frontera does for our audience, including the main issue and your organizational goals?

Christine Neumann-Ortiz: Well yeah, the reference in Spanish is “Voices from the Border” because even though I live in Wisconsin, I had spent time in Texas at the border there and had an opportunity to travel the border for a year and meet workers from the maquiladora industry that were organizing and a tri national coalition that was, building alliances between Canadian, US and Mexican workers, especially at the time of the Free trade agreement when it was being signed in 1994. 

And, and even then, at that very beginning stage, you could already see, the kinds of abuses that were taking place in terms of exposure to like the environment with and chemical exposure to workers who went unprotected and just, poverty despite people working and working really hard. And so that became, how people were organizing under those conditions. It really became the inspiration when it came back to Wisconsin to form, kind of a worker center model.

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FEATURING JUDITH ENCK - We are awash in plastics, from the polyester clothing on our backs, to the glasses on our face, the polish on our nails, the packaging of our food, and even the microplastics flowing through our blood. In less than a century, plastic has revolutionized our lives and leaves a legacy that is slowly poisoning us. 

Now, as we enter the thick of holiday season, the plastic consumption is ramping up, from plastic toys and gifts and giftwrap, to plastic-packaged foods and dinner ware and more. 

 Can we free ourselves of plastic? Yes we can, says Judith Enck, founder and president of Beyond Plastics, an organization whose goal is eliminating plastic pollution everywhere. Enck was appointed by President Obama to serve as regional administrator at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2009 and served as deputy secretary for the environment in the New York Governor’s Office.

Enck is currently a professor at Bennington College and the author of the new book The Problem With Plastic: How We Can Save Ourselves and Our Planet Before It’s Too Late. She spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about how people can take political action, and how you can have a plastic-free holiday this year.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: I think a lot of people understand now that plastic is a problem, but maybe they're not as aware just how deeply embedded it is in our lives and actually, in our bodies itself. I remember the first time I read about microplastics polluting the ocean, you know, from those little tiny beads that some manufacturers decided it would be good to put in things like lotion and soap, to finding out that plastic filaments are in our bloodstream. And it was quite shocking. So how do you explain how that even happens? How does, how does plastic get into our bodies? We just surround ourselves with so much plastic, it's just everywhere now?

Judith Enck: Well, none of us voted for more plastic. the reason we have so much plastic is because there is a glut of fracked gas on the market. Historically, plastics were made from oil and chemicals. Today it's made from 16,000 different chemicals and ethane, which is a byproduct of fracking 'cause there's a glut of frack gas. Fossil fuel companies are using that waste product to produce new plastic products. 

The way plastics get into our bodies is we're either breathing it in or we're swallowing, particularly from food and beverage packaging. And the health consequences are quite significant. 

So, scientific researchers have found the presence of microplastics in our blood, our lungs, our kidney, our heart arteries, where they've seen microplastics attached to plaque. If you've got microplastics on plaque, you have a much greater risk of developing heart disease, stroke, premature death. 

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FEATURING NORMAN SOLOMON - Corporate Democrats pushed progressive alternatives out of the way to promote themselves as alternatives to Trump–and lost–in 2016 and 2024. That’s the assertion central to a new book by Norman Solomon called The Blue Road to Trump Hell: How Corporate Democrats Paved the Way for Autocracy.

With three long years of Trump’s second term stretching before us, Solomon urges a critical analysis of just how destructive figures like Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer and even Barack Obama have been, and why it’s essential to defeat them in order to defeat Trumpism. 

Norman Solomon, national director of RootsAction and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include War Made Invisible. He spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about his newlatestbook, The Blue Road to Trump Hell: How Corporate Democrats Paved the Way for Autocracy.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: So, this book is a very detailed and yet extremely straightforward analysis of how it was that Democrats, particularly the corporate wing of the Democratic Party, paved the way for Trump. Now, that's not something we hear very much, if at all, in the mainstream media, that we blame Democrats for the rise of the top Republican, the most dangerous Republican that we've seen in our lifetime, if not ever. So why, let's talk about… you start the book in the year 2016, and actually you kind of talk about Obama in 2009. Where's the good starting point for that analysis that corporate Democrats are to blame for Trump's rise? 

Norman Solomon: Well, I suppose if we go way back bill Clinton, who sided with big corporations who pushed in NAFTA, who did the Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996, which opened the floodgates for monopolization of media, increasingly right-wing. 

In terms of the book I do refer to Barack Obama, a hero of many democratic liberals and so-called moderates, where he came into office. There were millions and millions of people with their mortgages underwater with toxic mortgages, and he let them sink and he bailed out Wall Street and the big banks. And so even while Obama sailed into reelection as Bill Clinton had, he left the party leaders and especially elected Democrats to drown. 

And so, if we trace where we are now, I think we can go back to, in many ways, the eight years of Obama, both, abandoning middle class and low-income people, at the same time that he let other Democrats sink or swim, often sink, in terms of the rising inequality anger that people justifiably felt. 

And so, what happened during the decade where Obama was in office, basically, 1,000 Democrats lost their seats in state legislatures around the country. So, the Republicans came in, ran more and more state governments and the legislatures there, and they were able to reapportion and gerrymander. 

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FEATURING DR. JEN JONES - Our nation and our world is overrun by billionaires and bigots, but they are few and we are many. On this series, exclusive to subscribers of Rising Up With Sonali and viewers of Free Speech TV, we’ll hear from organizers in the movements for social justice, and dig into the nuts and bolts of values, strategies, tactics, narratives, and building power. 

This week, Dr. Jen Jones, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) joins us. She leads the center’s research, policy, and outreach efforts around science policy, scientific integrity, science of elections, and disinformation.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: So, I really was excited to have Union of Concerned Scientists on, in part because my background is in science and I transitioned to social justice, and also in part because we don't often think, I think of scientific organizations as being deeply interested matters of social justice and matters of humanity. So, for those people who've never heard of what UCS is or does, how do you explain its main goal? 

Dr. Jen Jones: You know, our main goal is to use science for solutions, and those solutions should create a more healthy and just world. So, justice and equity are centered in everything we do. You know, we believe that science should work for the public and it should inform the policies that really protect, the health of people, the health of the planet, you know, from clean air to safe food, to equitable transportation, science should work for people. And as you said in your intro, not just for billionaires. 

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This story was originally published on August 5, 2025.

FEATURING DORTELL WILLIAMS - The United States prison system is one of the harshest and most punitive in the world, locking up nearly 2 million people. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, “The U.S. locks up more people per capita than any other independent democracy, at the staggering rate of 580 per 100,000 residents.” What is the point of such a high rate of incarceration? 

Rehabilitation, we are told, is the goal, and that imprisoning people who are convicted of crimes, will help them and help society. But does this work? Are there even mechanisms in place to measure if it’s working? Or are we merely locking people up and throwing away the keys?

But, what about those people who are sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole?

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The Federal Bureau of Prisons reported that, “inmates who participate in correctional education programs have 43 percent lower odds of returning to prison than those who do not, and that every dollar spent on prison education saves four to five dollars on the costs of re-incarceration.” But prisons are constantly starving for funds.

Dortell Williams is serving a life sentence without parole at Mule Creek State Prison in California and is a regular correspondent with Rising Up With Sonali. An urgent effort to free him is underway. Find out more at www.FreeDortellWilliams.com.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: Welcome back to the program Dortell Williams. 

Dortell Williams: Yeah, good morning. Good morning to you and your audience. I'm glad to be with you. 

Kolhatkar: So, you and I have talked so much about prisons and what they do, what they don't do. We are going to be talking today about rehabilitation, which often is in the words that are used to describe prisons. They're labeled institutions that rehabilitate, in other words, help reform individuals who have been convicted of crimes. 

What does rehabilitation mean in the context of prisons? Like how do prisons actually say they rehabilitate people? 

Williams: Well, you know, it's an elusive word, and I would say for people with life sentences, me included, the board is probably the best measurement of rehabilitation as far as the state's definition of it. And that is to show that you're not a, a present danger to society when they release you. 

And then further than that, just in general, if a person were to get out and stay out for three years without going back to prison, they would consider that rehabilitated. 

Kolhatkar: So for people who don't have access to parole or being able to go before a parole board, what does that mean? I mean, you have a life sentence without the possibility of parole. So how do you, how does someone in your position get treated by the system? 

Williams: Well to be, to be blunt we don't exist. We just, we just don't exist. There's no measurement for us. There's no mechanism for us to be measured to, to go to the board. We're just labeled incorrigible from the moment we're sentenced. And most of us are sentenced as emerging adults. So that means that we're between the ages of 18 and 25, which is generally the ages that people go to prison. But we are we're deemed incorrigible from the beginning, and that's it. So yeah, that's, that's how they would measure that. 

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FEATURING DINA GILIO-WHITAKER - In August 2022, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences  apologized to Sacheen Littlefeather for her mistreatment after her 1973 protest speech at the Oscars. Littlefeather shot to fame when Academy Award winner Marlon Brando asked her to decline the award on his behalf. She read a speech about Hollywood’s discrimination against Indigenous people and was booed off stage and blacklisted ever since.

But just days after receiving the Academy’s long-overdue apology, a shocking revelation about Littlefeather raised the fraught question of Indigenous American identity–she was outed as an ethnic fraudster and was revealed to not be who she said she was. The case sparked a new book by Dina Gilio-Whitaker (Colville Confederated Tribes). Gilio-Whitaker is a lecturer of American Indian Studies at California State University San Marcos, and an independent consultant and educator in environmental justice policy planning. 

An award-winning journalist as well, she contributes to numerous online outlets including Indian Country Today and the Los Angeles Times. She is the author of multiple books, including As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice from Colonization to Standing Rock. She spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about her new book, Who Gets to Be Indian? Ethnic Fraud and Other Difficult Conversations about Native American Identity. 

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: I remember being horribly shocked as well when the revelations about Sacheen Littlefeather came out. I was at that time writing a book about narratives and had actually written a whole section in my book about her putting forward a narrative about racial identity, ethnic identity, and native Americanness, and, had to quickly go back and kind of rewrite some aspects of it. 

And I also remember you on Facebook—we’re Facebook friends—talking about it, you had a little bit of insight before the rest of the world knew what had really happened with Sacheen Littlefeather. Take us through that. You knew before most people did, that she actually wasn't who she said she was. And that was because you yourself had been fascinated by her story. So, tell us about that. 

Dina Gilio-Whitaker: Right. Well, this is really the, the point of origin for this book. I mean, it's something I've been thinking about all my life because of my own com complex identity issues. But, the book started as a result of my relationship with Sacheen Littlefeather, which began in 2012 when I was writing for Indian Country today. 

And, I had gotten to know her. I was asked to write a story about her. It was had to do with a Dennis Miller comment about her, a racial slur. And so, it led to my writing this article about that and meeting her. 

After I wrote that article, she asked me if I would be willing to ghostwrite her memoir. She wanted to write this memoir, and this is about a couple years later. And I said, sure, you know, let's explore that. So, it led to this whole experience that I had with her, where we began the process of writing this book together. 

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FEATURING COLLIN REES - Our nation and our world is overrun with billionaires and bigots, but they are few and we are many. On this series, exclusive to subscribers of Rising Up With Sonali and viewers of Free Speech TV, we’ll hear from organizers in the movements for social justice, and dig into the nuts and bolts of values, strategies, tactics, narratives, and building power. 

This week, my guest is Collin Rees, the U.S. Program Manager at Oil Change International. Oil Change is working to stop the expansion of the fossil fuel industry, support grassroots resistance against dirty infrastructure, end public support for oil, gas, and coal, and wind down fossil fuel production with a just and equitable transition.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: So, let's first talk about the main goal of ending fossil fuels and our reliance on it. This is a huge, huge goal, right? It's as huge as, or perhaps huger than most things that we're talking about, you know, on the scale of fixing democracy, et cetera. And it's also one on which we have so much at stake, the existence of our species. So how do you go about achieving this goal? Give us a sense of your approaches to ending our reliance on oil. 

Collin Rees: Yeah. it is not a small goal, and I think we're aware of that but we think it's a really critical one. And I think the flip side, I think we'll talk more about that, the fact that this is so much work needed to make a transition happen, that the way that energy and oil and gas in particular touch our lives happens in so many ways. It's such a sprawling problem to confront, means that we have so many allies and that we can work alongside other movements for justice alongside so many people working to build a better world. 

Because at the core, that's what we're working to do. We are working to stop this existential threat to communities and to humanity. But we are doing that in order to build a world where everyone can thrive. And so I think about the work that we do in a couple different spheres. 

Specifically, we're a nonprofit. We have some expertise, and in particular, we have a lot of research and data and analysis expertise. So, research and data is one component of what we do. 

I wanna be very clear that we do not think research and data alone can defeat the fossil fuel industry. and so we are very clear that that research and data has to be combined with people's movements, with working directly with people's movements to create change. 

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FEATURING ANYA ROSE - The November 2025 elections showed Americans are in a mood to tax the rich to fund the things we all need. That sentiment wasn’t just on display in New York City where voters picked a mayor who promises free childcare paid for by taxing the rich, but the state of Colorado where a pair of propositions in a similar vein passed. 

Propositions LL and MM passed by wide margins and levy taxes on the wealthiest Coloradans to ensure school kids are fed at no cost to families and that cafeteria workers would be better paid. The ballot measures come in the wake of a massive political battle that saw interruptions to the federal food stamp program.

Anya Rose is the Director of Public Policy at Hunger Free Colorado, a statewide nonprofit that connects people to food resources and drives policy and systems change to end hunger. She spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about how the ballot measures passed and what they mean for Coloradans.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: So, let's talk about what these two propositions are. Why were they in two separate propositions to begin with? There's LL and then MM. And since, since you are really in the trenches with this, give us a brief overview of what each of these ballot measures asked of voters. 

Anya Rose: Yeah. So, these ballot measures one, there are two of them because of some very particular Colorado laws. But essentially, they are about continuing the Healthy School Meals for All program in Colorado, which was created back in 2022 when voters first agreed to create and fund this program, and has since been wildly popular and, and proven to need some more revenue. 

And so, proposition LL is about asking to keep money that has already been raised for this program. That's something we have to do in Colorado because of provisions in our state constitution called the Taxpayer Bill of Rights that are pretty restrictive about how revenue can be raised and used in our state and also determine election provisions. 

And then proposition MM, was about raising additional revenue to make sure that the program has long term sustainability and can be fully implemented since some pieces that were really important to community have been on hold. 

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FEATURING DIEGO FRANCO - Thousands of Starbucks baristas began an indefinite strike on November 13, the so-called “Red Cup day,” a major holiday-season marketing gimmick by the corporate coffee chain. The workers, who are part of the relatively new Starbucks Workers United union, are saying “No Contract, No Coffee,” and are asking members of the public to not cross the picket lines at hundreds of Starbucks cafes around the country until their demands are met.

Diego Franco is a six-year Starbucks barista, based in Chicago. He is a member of Starbucks Workers United, where he serves as an elected strike captain and bargaining delegate. He recently wrote an op-ed in USA Today titled “I'm a Starbucks barista. I'm striking because I want 'the best job in retail.”

Franco spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about why Starbucks workers are striking.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: I've been following the Starbucks organizing effort for the last few years, relatively speaking. It is a new union when it first burst onto the scene and cafes started organizing one cafe at a time. It drew a lot of attention. I think primarily because Starbucks is such an iconic American brand, is this indefinite strike, meaning it's not just a one-day strike, strike until demands are met, an unfair labor practice strike, is this the first major nationwide strike of this nature that the union has taken on? 

Diego Franco: This is not the first nationwide strike, however, this will be the largest strike in the company's history. 

Kolhatkar: And so why are people striking? And, and I also should emphasize that this is not the case that all Starbucks cafes are unionized, right? There's a fraction of Starbucks cafes that have unionized, albeit very fast. So, it's just those cafes that have union staff that are on strike and, why are they on strike? 

Franco: We are on strike wanting to fight the unfair labor practices and wanting to finish out our contract. Starbucks has been stonewalling us for the past year and don't believe we are deserving of more in our economic package. 

And, notoriously, they have invested a lot of money in union busting campaigns, either across the whole country or on a store-by-store basis. And we're simply doing everything we can to fight that. 

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FEATURING ANGELA MOONEY D'ARCY - Our nation and our world is overrun with billionaires and bigots, but they are few and we are many. On this series, exclusive to subscribers of Rising Up With Sonali and viewers of Free Speech TV, we’ll hear from organizers in the movements for social justice, and dig into the nuts and bolts of values, strategies, tactics, narratives, and building power. 

This week Angela Mooney Darcy, Executive Director and Founder of the Sacred Places Institute for Indigenous Peoples joins us. Angela is from the Acjachemen Nation, the Native Nation whose traditional territories include the area also known as Orange County, California. She has worked with Native Nations, Indigenous peoples, grassroots and nonprofit organizations, artists, educators, and institutions on environmental and cultural justice issues for over twenty-five years.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Angela Mooney D’Arcy: Thank you so much for having me. I started listening to your show when I was in law school years ago, so was very…

Sonali Kolhatkar: Oh my goodness!

D’Arcy: …very, very excited to get your message. 

Kolhatkar: Well, we've both been at it for a long time, and I'm glad our paths have intersected. Tell me about the Sacred Places Institute for Indigenous Peoples. How do you summarize the work that your organization does? What is your main organizational goal? 

D’Arcy: Well, our mission is to build the capacity of native nations and Indigenous peoples to protect sacred lands, waters, and cultures. And our goal is to achieve paradigm shifts, to protect Indigenous people so that our peoples and cultures can exist for all time. 

And for us, that very much is about protecting all of our human and non-human relatives and the earth herself, because Indigenous people's life ways and relationships with the earth and with all of our relatives around the world is what keeps the world in balance. 

And as you indicate in your introduction, right now, we are a world very much out of balance. So, from our perspective, supporting Indigenous peoples in this way, and that paradigm shift actually protects the world for everyone.

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FEATURING GABRIELLE OLIVEIRA - Donald Trump’s second term agenda is centered on the criminalization, scapegoating, incarceration, and disappearance of nonwhite immigrants. And although many Americans seem to have forgotten it, his first term was also marked by the same. 

A new book called Now We Are Here: Family Migration, Children’s Education, and Dreams for a Better Life, follows the stories of 16 migrant families from Latin America who were victims of harsh government enforcement through 2018 and 2019, and how their stories distill the deeply-politicized issue of immigration through a much-needed human lens.

The book's author, Gabrielle Oliveira, is Jorge Paulo Lemann Associate Professor of Education and Brazil Studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar recently about it.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: So, as I mentioned, a lot of folks forgot the family separation scandal, the horrific kind of human tragedy that unfolded in the years 2016 to 2020. And far too many Americans decided that they could cast their vote for Trump, including people from mixed-status immigrant families. And now we're seeing, I think in escalation even it seems of what happened in the first term. 

So, tell me about these families you profiled and why you wrote this book. These were families that were victimized, criminalized and, really traumatized in 2018 and 2019. Why them? 

Gabrielle Oliveira: Right. So, I was doing work, you know, at the time I was doing work in schools here in Massachusetts that had bilingual programs, which meant that, you know, children were learning in Portuguese and in Spanish. And that has been, you know, some of the work that I've been doing for my own trajectory, my own career. 

And I started hearing during these interviews with families, families describing what had happened to them at the border, either being detained and separated, or detained together. And those stories just seem that, you know, the families were very much still thinking about those stories. The children were bringing those stories to the schools, and the teachers didn't really know what to do with, you know, the stories that were being brought to the school. 

So, for me, it was really important to try to capture in real time what was happening and to hear from the families that had just gone through those separations and detentions, either together right, or being sent to different places in the United States. 

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FEATURING OSPREY ORIELLE LAKE - The latest United Nations climate conference, COP30, is taking place in Belem, Brazil where nations are still attempting, after decades, to comprehensively tackle climate change and its impacts head on. 

While much mainstream American discourse on climate justice is centered on preserving humanity and human lives, a new brief by the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) brings to the forefront a critically important tool for climate justice: the rights of nature, an all-encompassing legal approach to preserving all life.

Osprey Orielle Lake is the Founder and Executive Director of the Women's Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN). She sits on the Executive Committee for the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (GARN) and spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about WECAN's new report.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: The place that I have heard the rights of nature really come up. and, you know, and I think folks who are engaged in the climate justice movement know of Ecuador's case in 2008, I believe it was, that Ecuador essentially changed its Constitution to encompass, to uphold and to preserve the rights of nature. 

Using that, using Ecuador as an example, how do you explain what it means when you say the rights of nature?

Osprey Orielle Lake: Well, it's really an important country where rights of nature, as you said, put in 2008 rights of nature to the Constitution. And it's been a growing movement for many years. in the seventies, there was a professor Christopher Stone who put out a document called “If Trees Had Standing,” which in essence basically said, could we have a form of jurisprudence, a way of law that recognized that the natural world could have its own rights? 

And it's a really important activity, philosophy, and action for the climate justice movement because, right now, nature does not have standing in a court of law. And so, in the new systems that we have since colonialism, people own property. And so, you have to have the property owner represent a river or a mountain or a forest. 

And what rights of nature laws do is they really turn this inside out and upside down, and say, no, we actually are living in a time in which the rivers and the mountains and all of the animals need their own rights to be represented and have their own voice in court of law. 

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FEATURING YASHICA DUTT - Zohran Mamdani, the unlikely 34-year old Uganda-born, South Asian, Muslim, immigrant is New York City’s new mayor.

Journalist Yashica Dutt, who has closely followed his campaign described last Tuesday’s election this way: “against all odds, Mamdani — through his gifted political acumen, a brilliant team of 30-something managers, and his exceptional hold over his own narrative and messaging — carved his own space in the political mainstream while the establishment was intent on not giving him an inch.”

How did he do it? Were there missed opportunities? What are lessons we can learn from his campaign and candidacy?

Yashica Dutt is a Dalit journalist and author of the award-winning book on caste, Coming Out as Dalit. She has been covering New York's Mayoral election since April and was the first journalist to extensively cover the South Asian mobilization for the Zohran Mamdani campaign. She spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about what the campaign got right and where it could have done better.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: So, was it surprising for you? I mean, polls showed that he looked like he was going to win. It would've been shocking if he hadn't, it seems. And still it felt, at least for those of us watching from far off, quite unreal. What was that like on election night? What was the atmosphere in the city? 

Yashica Dutt: The atmosphere in the city, not just on election night, but in the weeks before the election was absolutely electric. I have been reporting, like you mentioned, since April, and there was such a stark difference in what we saw during the primary. 

Even before the primary election in New York, there was a sense that Mandani could win. As somebody who had been attending all these events and seeing the response from people change towards him in such a dramatic way. I remember I attended this event in Ozone Park, which is a Bangladeshi majority neighborhood here in Queens in New York City, and he literally got mobbed by Desi folks, a lot of people who wanted to get photos clicked with him. 

People saw on their Instagram stories that he was there, and they just rushed to see him, to get a glimpse of him. And that was before the primary. So, you can imagine after months of excitement and the polls that really showed him way ahead of Andrew Cuomo, and also the events that he had done. 

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FEATURING NOURBESE FLINT - Our nation and our world is overrun with billionaires and bigots, but they are few and we are many. On this series, exclusive to subscribers of Rising Up With Sonali and viewers of Free Speech TV, we’ll hear from organizers in the movements for social justice, and dig into the nuts and bolts of values, strategies, tactics, narratives, and building power. 

This week our guest is Nourbese Flint, President of All* Above All, and All* In Action Fund, leading their work to build political power and achieve reproductive justice for all.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: What does All above All mean? I get that it's a reproductive justice organization, but that name, I think, an explanation of it can help people understand where you're coming from. 

Nourbese Flint: Yeah. So, it's actually a part of our origin story. All above All was created right after the Affordable Care Act passing I think it was in 2008, 2009?

Kolhatkar: 2010, I think. 

Flint: Yeah. Whew, I’m like dating myself. But, when it got passed, the kind of compromise was abortion access. So, we still didn't have any federal coverage of abortion. And we had to segment in state coverage for abortion access. And so, some of us got together and kind of had a conversation like we can no longer have and leverage abortion access, particularly abortion access that really impacts folks who are living at the margins, as a tool anymore. 

And so, All Above All really leaned into when people say “All,” it's usually with an asterisk, and it's not really all, it's well ‘all accept women of color or all accept LGBT folks or all accept young people.’ And so, we wanted to lean into the All. And when we say All it means all, so All* Above All with the asterisk saying that we are actually putting first the folks that usually are the asterisk at the bottom. 

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FEATURING JEAN SU - A massive push for data centers around the nation threatens to undermine progress in combating climate change. Our voracious appetite for cloud storage, search engines, and especially artificial intelligence has a serious real-world impact–one that threatens our very existence. 

A new report by the Center for Biological Diversity outlines this threat and how it can be addressed. Jean Su is the energy justice director for the Center for Biological Diversity, based in Washington, DC and she shared the report's recommendations with Sonali Kolhatkar.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: So, of course we've dealt with or lived with, I should say, issues around what powers search engines and cloud storage, and that, in and of itself has been a concern. But just in the last few years, the incredible reliance on artificial intelligence seems to have hypercharged, I think, this impact, particularly as we're seeing Wall Street, you know, new startups, hedge fund investors you know, all of these ventures, including government support being thrown behind this technology that uses massive amounts of energy. How serious is the fossil fuel impact of AI data centers? 

Jean Su: So, the fossil fuel impact of data centers is extremely grave and serious. Just to give you a comparison, web services, search engines, all of those things you just mentioned are one 10th of the electricity that's needed to actually fuel AI, artificial intelligence. So that's a huge difference. 

What we did was that, we calculated the projected carbon emissions of this surge in an AI boom, and we found the carbon emissions from a primarily fracked gas-powered expansion are incredibly large, and they're so large that they could undermine our national climate target for 2035 by 60% in, in the sense that other sectors would have to actually cut an extra 60% for us to even meet our climate goal of trying to limit greenhouse gases to a livable planet.